December 2- 8, 2004

cover story

Bought and Sold in America

NIGHTMARES RECALLED: Nga Do found herself trapped in American Samoa, working in slavelike conditions for a Korean-owned company supplying clothing to U.S. retailers, including J.C. Penney. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Seven women now living in, and around, Upper Darby were victims of human trafficking. Their case sparked public outrage. But are they better off today?

by Helen i-lin Hwang

Fear began to fill Nga Do's body with every bump on the road as she rode in a rickety bus—with loose windows banging in the frames and her luggage piled atop the roof. What had she gotten herself into? she wondered. She couldn't ask her guide questions because he couldn't speak Vietnamese, the only language she knew at the time. She became frightened about her decision to leave Vietnam to work in a garment factory in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.

By the time Do, 18, arrived at the factory dormitory in July 1999 after a two-day voyage that ended in American Samoa, she was too exhausted to notice the 8-foot-high barbed-wire fence and gate she passed through to get to her new workplace and home.

Do left Vietnam on the promise of $408 a month plus food and housing. The per capita annual income in Vietnam is $483, according to the U.S. Department of State.

Little did she know she was entering into the life of a sweatshop worker—forced to work in a factory for little pay where workers were beaten, starved and sexually harassed.

That day, Do became a victim of human trafficking, the unsavory business of shuffling people across international borders and exploiting them for manufacturing and sex industry jobs. After drug dealing, human trafficking is the most profitable criminal commerce in the world. Each year, approximately 900,000 people are trafficked globally, and as many as 20,000 victims are brought into the United States to work in brothels, sweatshops and other lucrative illegal ventures. Do's plight blazed the trail for human trafficking legislation and stepped up federal efforts to crack down on the criminal rings that take advantage of immigrants desperate for a better life.

Hers would become the first test case to pave the way for other trafficking victims to testify against the ringleaders who took cruel advantage of them. In 2000, the U.S. government would pass the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, an effort to protect human trafficking victims and prosecute their traffickers. That act also inspired the Rescue and Restore anti-trafficking pilot program that was established in Philadelphia this April (See Sidebar on this page).

Today, Do is among at least a dozen trafficking survivors who call the Delaware Valley home. While their lives are clearly better than they'd been on that U.S. territory in the South Pacific Ocean, they're still dealing with painful memories as they struggle to attain the life they long dreamed of and sought so far from home.

This past summer in an immaculate, cozy Upper Darby duplex, Do and six other Vietnamese women first to be categorized as human trafficking victims by the U.S. government, recalled their days of starvation, beatings, sexual harassment and working without pay.

All that Kim Thanh Tran, 26, will say is it was "horrible, don't want to think about it." She remembers how sweltering the factory was and how the darkness surrounding the compound frightened her.

The women remain close, often meeting for elaborate home-cooked meals of soy-sauce chicken and fish and shrimp, sharing the news of their lives today while putting their painful past behind them.

Now living and working in the Philadelphia suburbs, they were among 250 Vietnamese and Chinese workers who toiled at Daewoosa Samoa Ltd., a Korean-owned garment factory that made clothing for American stores like J.C. Penney. (The factory was located in American Samoa so the clothes' tags could say "Made in the U.S.A.")

There, they say, factory owner Kil Soo Lee would come up behind the women and grope their buttocks. Thirty-six women shared one room, sleeping in bunk beds with thin foam mattresses. Lee would go into their rooms and lift up their mosquito nets while they were sleeping, sometimes tapping them softly on their hands just to wake them up for no apparent reason.

Through a translator, Dung Nga, 25, said the bosses would sometimes watch them take showers.

The workers were always given little food, but the portions grew smaller as time wore on in their servitude. Typically, they were given soup and stir-fry with tomatoes, onions and cabbage. For nearly two years, Do ate two boiled eggs every morning. This, even though she was told, before paying $4,500 for the ability to leave Vietnam and get a job, that she would be given a half-chicken to eat every Sunday. Instead, Sundays meant giving the soup pot a shake to see if she could scrounge up a tiny chunk of meat from the five chickens disintegrated in a large vat of broth and divided among hundreds of people.

The new arrivals had their passports taken away as soon as they got there. Each time the laborers left the compound, they had to leave all identification papers with a Samoan security guard named Nu'uuli Ioane. Curfew was 9 p.m. and if they were a few minutes late, he would hit them. If they tried to sneak in extra food, they were sometimes beaten.

Tensions mounted between the workers and Daewoosa bosses, culminating in a horrific group beating on Nov. 28, 2000. Ioane got several other Samoan employees who worked in the same factory to join him in pummeling the Vietnamese workers. One woman's eye was gouged out. The Upper Darby women say another man lost his hearing and had his arm broken. Two of them escaped through a window.

LOOKING BACK: Dung Nga recalls that, among countless humiliations, factory bosses would watch the women shower. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The women speak rapidly in Vietnamese as they recall the incident. Their voices drop to a low, grave hum instead of their usual high-pitched giggling. The trauma still hangs heavy in their voices, the pain still fresh.

In the aftermath of the beating in Samoa, the factory was closed, along with the cafeteria. Suddenly, the workers went from being hungry all the time to having nothing to eat at all. A local church donated rice and soup. The laborers were stranded for months, taking handouts whenever they could get them.

Since 1999, the Department of Labor had been investigating complaints against Daewoosa for nonpayment of wages, but the violence that sent workers to the hospital brought pleas for help to a charity volunteer on the island. He happened to be an attorney from North Carolina fluent in Vietnamese and helped the workers find resources.

Ultimately, these women were saved by computer, a far cry from the Vietnamese refugees who took a wild chance in leaky rafts on the South China Sea in the 1970s and '80s.

With the help of another charity worker's laptop, one of the Daewoosa workers sent an e-mail to a distant relative in the Philadelphia area; it was a virtual message in a bottle from a distant island in the Pacific. The family member posted the SOS message on a Vietnamese community bulletin board, a cry for help that launched the relentless efforts of a single clergyman.

The Rev. Joseph Thien Tran, a Vietnamese Catholic priest with a parish in Upper Darby and a former boat refugee himself, heard about the trafficking victims on the message board.

Touched by the desperate need of these women, he went to his Vietnamese congregation. He explained about the hundreds of Vietnamese stranded on a Pacific Island in need of sponsorship. They would need money for airplane fare from Samoa to the states, costing roughly $800 to $900 per ticket. They would also need homes and jobs when they arrived.

Tran, a dogged man with speckled gray hair and a jovial manner, secured travel money and arranged housing and jobs in nail salons and factories for 33 women and one man. They would no longer starve and flounder in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"What I had in mind at that time was to get them out as soon as possible," says Tran. "Give them a great opportunity to make a new life in America."

In February 2001, Do was interviewed in American Samoa by the FBI agents building their case. A month later, Lee was taken into custody. He awaits sentencing in Honolulu next month on charges including involuntary servitude, extortion and money laundering.

Two months later, Do and her fellow workers were the first to immigrate to the United States under a special visa called a trafficking visa, or "T-visa."

Do arrived in the United States in April and came to live with Lan Nguyen, a nail salon owner who lived in Upper Darby. Nguyen also owned two houses, which sheltered a few of her relatives, but there was room for more. Nguyen took Do in, partly because she had a daughter about Do's age. She taught Do how to manicure nails, just like she taught her own children, and gave her a job at her Havertown Nail Salon.

Do still lives with the family today and works as a nail technician, making about $250 a week, after taxes, plus tips. Nguyen says she "loves" her boarder and employee. Do also started taking an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) class at Delaware County Community College, but at $300, the classes are costly.

On a crisp fall Sunday afternoon, the women watch a cousin's wedding video, sent from Vietnam, over and over again. One of the women received it two weeks ago and has watched it countless times with her friends. The DVD shows the streets of Hanoi, men sitting down for a meal and the joyful ceremony that they could not witness in person. It's a nostalgic afternoon, an escape of sorts for the women resting after another week of giving manicures and pedicures.

Kim Tran, 26, doesn't really like the Elkins Park nail salon where she works "because the smell is so bad."

"I don't speak English well but what kind of job can I get?" she says, with resignation. Sure, she found a free ESL class but says it's too far since she doesn't own a car. Today, she shares an apartment with another former Daewoosa worker.

On the other hand, Dung Nga, who works in Exton, says through a translator that she takes pride in being self-sufficient. Besides, doing nails is a lot easier than their last job.

Hong Nguyen, a 34-year-old who now works in West Chester, was able to bring her husband and two children from Vietnam to her Upper Darby home, where they host Saturday-night dinners for her former co-workers.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: The women still regularly get together to talk about their lives in the Delaware Valley and consult with their attorney. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Tham Hoang, 25, is also from Do's hometown in the Bac Ninh province. The two spend most Sundays together, watching Vietnamese-American DVDs in a living room that's still decorated with colorful paper streamers and decorative bells from a wedding reception she held for a former Daewoosa worker several months ago. Hoang misses her boyfriend, who still lives in Vietnam, and asks their interpreter, who happens to be married to an immigration attorney, whether there's a way to bring him over.

She's told it will be tough since she doesn't have a green card yet, and even then, it will still be difficult.

With her trafficker in jail, Do hopes for a brighter future. One day, she'd like to live in a seemingly idyllic all-American, middle-class suburb like Havertown. She can't wait to rent an apartment or house for her family so she can take care of her parents. That is, if they're able to come to America, like the new trafficking laws say they should.

When Do entered the country, her parents weren't allowed to immigrate with her. Last December, however, the legislation was amended to allow trafficking victims under the age of 21 to bring their parents and siblings under age 18 to America with them. The change acknowledged that young trafficking victims need the help of their families to recover from the traumatic ordeal, and that the families are sometimes harassed by the traffickers.

Since the law was retroactive, the group's first local attorney and current legal interpreter, Thu Tranh, filed appeals on Do's behalf for the immigration office to issue visas for her parents. There's been no word from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in months, so Do's current immigration attorney, Arnold L. Feldman—he is Tranh's husband—is helping Do reapply for her parents and submit new applications for her two younger brothers.

When do you think they can come? she constantly asks Tranh, eager to peg the day her dreams can come true. The cost of the second round of applications is $510, an extremely high expense for a nail technician. It's a price she really shouldn't have to pay, considering she testified against her trafficker for the Department of Justice and she originally applied for their visas in April 2002 and appealed in May 2003 after the visas were rejected.

By law, her family should've been able to join her in the U.S., and yet, a year after the law changed, her relatives are still stuck in Vietnam, eking out a living. Do held up her end of the bargain; why hasn't the U.S. Department of Justice held up theirs?

"Appeals should be approved based on that change, but none of the appeals have been adjudicated yet," adds Tranh, sharing her client's frustration.

Although 411 of 499 applications for T-visas for relatives have been approved, some applicants are left frustrated. Visa processing delays could be one reason the U.S. government has trouble getting more human trafficking witnesses to step forward. The trafficking ringleaders intimidate their victims with threats that no one will help them if they snitch.

Though the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to comment on Do's case due to the Privacy Act, spokesperson Shawn Saucier said the agency is "sympathetic to the victims of human trafficking and places special emphasis on those cases."

USCIS still maintains that they're "committed to delivering the right benefit to the right person at the right time," though Do submitted visa applications for her parents more than a year ago.

Despite the uncertainty, Do will be applying next year for a green card since her trafficking visa expires in September 2005. The trafficking visa lasts for three years. She tears up every time she considers the prospect of her parents coming to live with her.

"I would like my family to come over here," she says. "That's my dream."

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